Look at the map again. This time the point of radiation is Fort William on Lake Superior. Between Lake Superior and Hudson Bay northward for seven hundred miles is not a post. Into these dark, impenetrable, river-swamped forests the Nor’Westers send their men. Dangerous work, this! For some unaccountable reason the Indians of these shadowy forests are more treacherous and gloomy than the tribes of the plains. Umfreville passes through their territory when he tries to find a trail westward not on American soil. Shaw, the partner, and Long, the clerk, are sent in to drum up trade. The field is entered one hundred miles east of Fort William at Pays Plat, where canoes push north to Lake Nipigon. First, a fort is built on Lake Nipigon named Duncan, after Duncan Cameron. Long stays here in charge. Shaw, as partner, pushes on to a house half way down to Albany on Hudson Bay. The Indians call Mr. Shaw “the Cat” from his feeble voice. A third hand, Jacque Santeron, is sent eastward to the Temiscamingue Lakes south of Abbittibbi. The three Nor’Westers have, as it were, thrust themselves like a wedge between the spokes of the Hudson’s Bay Company from Moose River to Albany; but a thousand perils assail them, a thousand treacheries. First, the Frenchman Santeron loses courage, sends a farewell written on a birch-bark letter down to Long at Nipigon, and deserts bag and baggage, provisions and peltries, to the Hudson’s Bay at Abbittibbi. Determined to prevent such loss, Long tears across country to Temiscamingue only to find Santeron’s cabins abandoned and these words in charcoal on bark: “_Farewell my dear comrade; I go with daring and expect a good price for my furs with the English. With the best heart, I wish you luck. My regards to my partners. Good-by._” But desertion and theft of Company goods are not the worst of it. Down at Nipigon, Long hears that the Indians of the North are going to murder “the Cat”--Mr. Shaw--probably to carry the plundered furs down to the Hudson’s Bay. Long rushes to the rescue to find Shaw cooped up in the cabin surrounded by a tribe of frenzied Indians whom he tried in vain to pacify with liquor. “My God! But I’m glad to see you,” shouts Shaw, drawing Long inside the door. For a week the Indians had tried to set fire to his house by shooting arrows of lighted punk wood at it, but every window and crevice of the cabin bristles with loaded muskets--twenty-eight of them--that keep the assailants back. The Indians demand more liquor. Shaw gives it to them on condition they go away, but at daybreak back they come for more, naked and daubed with war paint from head to foot.